The Unbearable Lightness of Being is based on Milan Kundera's internationally acclaimed novel. It is a love story that begins during the Prague Spring, the liberalization of communist Czechoslovakia that the Soviets crushed with the invasion of August 1968. Tomas, a prominent young brain surgeon, is a bachelor and an epic womanizer. His relationships, whether short or long-term, are light by design. He meets a young woman in a country bar who moves in and eventually marries him, even as he continues other affairs. Their lives are disrupted by the Soviet invasion, which the film depicts through scenes of the characters edited with documentary clips of the historic event.